


Kingmaker

by oonaseckar



Category: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault, RENAULT Mary - Works
Genre: Ambition, Hate Sex, M/M, Politics, RenaultX Election Challenge, RenaultX Election Collection, Trans, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Issues, hints of trans issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 11:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3895240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2015 UK General Election: Bagoas is a personal secretary/party spin doctor to Alexander Argives, the Tory party's new boy wonder (of distant Graeco-Macedonian extraction.)  That's not all he is to him, either.  Not that that's prevented Alexander picking out a beautiful, suitable wife.  </p><p>And now he's elected, now he's in power.  Now he doesn't need Bagoas so much any more.  </p><p>But there's nothing stopping Bagoas making new alliances...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kingmaker

**Author's Note:**

> Trans issues, references to the Iranian revolution, murky motivations for sex.
> 
> I rather wondered about a modern-day Bagoas who was whole, unmutilated, free and precious to his family. Spoilt, I thought he'd be, and a bit wild, and looking for an anchor, a guiding light. This is how he turned out.

Considering the hours a junior minister puts into the job – as opposed to a regular vanilla MP – then Alexander might as well belong to Bagoas anyway. He made him, he is the kingmaker, and in all the things that matter, he belongs to the personal secretary who's known for seductive undue influence, in all ways.

But the little things are what matter to Bagoas, and those he doesn't get a shot at. The photo opportunity the morning after the election, that's hers and he knew it from the moment she was selected. The selection process for a Conservative MP's spouse, which is considerably more rigorous than for any actual MP, and she flew through it like the blue-blood big-money private-school little bitch that she...

He's not jealous of her. He breathes deep, and reminds himself. Not jealous. He should be sorry for her, in fact. One thing to be a beard, and another not to be aware of it. If he thought she gave a damn for anything but her shopping and her lunches and her gaggling, giggling coterie, he'd feel bad for her. 

Now, he hovers at the edges of the cordoned-off area of the fountain and public park in front of the Home Counties prettily manicured town council offices. It's where local TV and journalists are greeting and snapping and filming their new MP, Alexander Argives, post-election. The former prodigy, a little baby MP hothoused by the party insiders, and whispered about as destined for greatness. Now with greatness achieved, or close to it: a minister, and not much further he can go, barring the obvious. Alexander, and his lovely wife Roxana.

“Do you want to poison her tea, or shall I take the bitch riding and arrange a tragic accident?” Bagoas jumps a mile, greeted while unwary and with his face probably expressing his feelings a lot more clearly than is wise or politic. It's Heph: already in Parliament himself since the last go-round, and the old friend who's sponsored Alex to get this far this quick, meteroric and dizzy. Up until the last six months, it's Heph that Bagoas has been dedicating most of his anxious needy mental bile towards. He is Alex's oldest friend, they went through school and college and Sandhurst together, and... More than that. More than that, Bagoas is pretty sure, although Alex won't discuss it. Not whether he's delicately skirting the issue in his role as aide and spin-doctor, or if it's pillow-talk for unguarded moments.

It's never seemed to matter that Bagoas has been sleeping with Alexander since his second week on the job. Or that Heph mostly likes the ladies, and he and Alexander haven't been fuck-buddies, as well as buddies, since the last year of college. (See, pillow-talk has its uses, and Bagoas is the expert. Sieve out information, keep your enemies compromised and your friends bound to you with spur of the moment decisions and drunken regrets. There's barely a political friend, enemy, rival or simple potentially useful random Joe he hasn't either fucked or assembled some dossier on, as far as sex is concerned. Alexander is a special case though. Alexander is unique. Bagoas' motives were pure, the night they celebrated an impressive showing in a party meet 'n' greet with the blue-bloods and the blue rinses, and Alexander led him off to bed with a thumb looped through his buttonhole and a hand on his arse. 

His motives, they're _never_ pure, though. He doesn't know what's wrong with him. He isn't submissive, and he doesn't need coaxing or directing, and he wouldn't know how to begin to make nice. Sex is power, and he directs the show, always. Always knows exactly the manner it could benefit him, always understands his benefits, does a cost-benefit calculation beforehand. Sometimes literally. He never just _goes along_ , wide-eyed and docile. He's a little crazy, this past year, and it's Alexander's fault.) 

It doesn't matter. Sexless as a eunuch, their palship is, Alex and Heph, at least these days. And yet he can't decode or decipher where the bond's weakest or where to work to corrode and to vitiate it, to wean Alexander off the teat and supplant Heph as the closest, most important person in his life. Which is what he is, fucking or no, romance or not. 

Or that's how it's been, up until now. Now, when he has a whole new rival to worry about, after the 'whirlwind romance' and swift march to the altar that has delighted the Tory press with the handsome new young wunderkind and his pretty bride, and done wonders for Alexander's public profile and opinon poll stats. Whirlwind, Bagoas' arse. If it was any more of a calculated and choreographed move and necessary acquisition, then he'd be a judge on _Dancing With The Stars_ , awarding it a five for pizazz and creativity. If Roxana was any more perfectly designed as a political spouse then she'd be a cyborg.

Bagoas doesn't hate her, because he recognises her as expedient and necessary. And he has to tamp down the warm vindictive buzz whenever there's a publicity shot of her where she looks more startlingly than usual like him. Like him, in a dress. It's probably unconscious on Alex's part: but he certainly ruled out early on several more Home Counties-friendly horsey Young Conservative blondes. It's just infuriating that he can't _be_ her: and he damn near is, barring certain crucial aspects of biological equipment. 

He hasn't made the call, yet, on the meds he's been discussing with a Harley Street bod, nor or on anything more scalpel-happy and irreversible. (Paid for by indulgent parents, who got out of Iran just before the Shah lost his grip on power, and have shunted in the opposite direction from the looming awareness of the restriction and oppression their oldest might have encountered. “Just as long as you're happy, baby,” is the closest to discipline he's ever encountered.) Openly gay _and_ a party worker is an uneasy enough line to walk. Trans, and he'd be pushing it to even hang on by the fingernails in his current post, still less ever get through the selection process to stand for election. He knows his party, and is ever the realist. 

And Alexander's requirements and selection procedures, for a publicly acknowledged mate at least, are still more stringent. A gay partner might be more acceptable to the general public in these enlightened days, but not to the Tory party faithful. And a ministerial role would be the highest he'd ever climb if he made that bold choice. Choose a trans wife, and even that might be wiped out of his future possibilities, met with screechy aggressive incomprehension and hysterical fear of a tomorrow that isn't exactly identical with today. Alex is very fond of him: fonder than he knows, with his head clouded by restless ambition perpetually. But fondness trails in second, to that lust to test the limits of his capacities, to build his empire and shape decades of history. To be immortal, to have his name on unknown lips forever, to reach for a fame that'll never dim or die. Immortal, yes.

And now, meet the old rival, seems like the new buddy. Hephaistion taps him on the arm, and even that polite familiarity is more physical contact and acknowledgement than he's used to. From someone who has essentially perceived him as a supplanter, who has given him little beyond barks of greeting and hard glances since he shoehorned himself into Alex's inner circle. Leaning in to murmur into Bagoas' ear, that's a step further into intimacy that's enough to make Bagoas tingle. With shock? He'll go with that. For the time being. 

“One of my old girlfriends is an aromatherapist. I could probably source any amount of yew berries and castor beans, if you felt like brewing her up a nice strong herbal tea.” Bagoas would be more alarmed yet, if it wasn't for the tight, intense smile as Heph draws back. And the lingering eye contact, too.

He'd never try to claim that Heph isn't attractive. In that corn-fed rugger-bugger style, of course, enough muscle to serve as a tank, and the fairish conventional public-schoolly handsomeness that bespeaks generations of good nutrition and carefully calculated inbreeding. He put the Cretan bull into the Bullingdon Club, at Oxford. And belies his Graeco-Macedonian roots, shared with Alex. If he looked more English to the core, he'd be Bertie Wooster, or some over-developed curate pal of such. Bagoas has been immune, until now. Now. And sways in a little, and eyes are bound, and how has this possibility never occurred to him?

Keep your enemies closer. Then a little closer than that. “It'd be fun. Maybe not the greatest career move, though. You're not smitten?” he asks.

Heph shrugs. Those shoulders, shrugging, it probably pops up on a local meterologist's earthquake detection sensors and accelerometers. “He could have gone for a blow-up doll if he needed a placeholder in the role. Since it was obviously never going to be _you_... The temperament, though. At least a plastic dolly shuts the fuck up sometimes. You heard her yell at him yet?”

It hurts, but he shrugs through the pain. A new alliance, much more important. The flash of the photographer's camera, so bright, bright like the light that dazzles him to the truth and his own benefit, around Alex. He edges a little further away, closer in to Heph. “Talk about it later?”

xxx

Later, the talking they're doing is pillow-talking, but even that comes later still. Bagoas is a little busy, what with being bent over with his hair caught back into Heph's one meaty fist – his beautiful hair, and you couldn't call it a caress exactly. Holding him in place, ridden like a pretty mare in the hunt. After the fox, the prize.

If you can't court the king, get close to the prince at least. Bagoas is a political animal, and he also loves Alex. He does, he does. But this, this is close enough to power to get him off.


End file.
